Anacapa Island Lighthouse

Anacapa Island Lighthouse is a lighthouse in California, United States, on the entrance to Santa Barbara Channel, California. It was the last major light station to be built on the west coast. In 1874, a lighthouse was established at Point Hueneme, the nearest point on the mainland to Anacapa Island. As shipping in the Santa Barbara Channel increased, the Lighthouse Board eventually did decide to place a light on Anacapa Island, but to limit the expense of building a station on the inaccessible island, an unmanned acetylene lens lantern on a fifty-foot, skeletal tower was erected. In addition to the low-maintenance light, which was activated on March 11, 1912 and required servicing just twice a year, a whistling buoy was anchored five-eighths of a mile off the east end of the island. In 1938, under the direction of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Santa Barbara and Anacapa Islands became Channel Islands National Monument. A plan was proposed in 1962 to convert the Coast Guard’s Anacapa Island Station to unattended operation and remove all personnel. One of the major reasons for this change was the test firing of missiles from Point Mugu that required island residents to spend several hours each week in a shelter. The station remained staffed, but starting in 1962, families were no longer allowed on the island, and all coastguardsmen stationed on the island shared a single residence. Visitors to Anacapa Island today can see the lighthouse, fog signal building, one of the original keeper’s dwellings, the water storage building, the powerhouse, and the third-order Fresnel lens, which was removed from the tower in 1989 and placed on display in the Anacapa Island Visitor Center, formerly the station’s service building. Third-order Fresnel lens used in lighthouse